Humans may engage in human-to-computer dialogs with interactive software applications referred to herein as “automated assistants” (also referred to as “chatbots,” “interactive personal assistants,” “intelligent personal assistants,” “personal voice assistants,” “conversational agents,” etc.). For example, humans (which when they interact with automated assistants may be referred to as “users”) may provide commands, queries, and/or requests (collectively referred to herein as “queries”) using free form natural language input which may include vocal utterances converted into text and then processed and/or typed free form natural language input.
Users may engage with automated assistants using a variety of different types of computing devices, such as smart phones, laptop computers, tablet computers, and so forth. “Assistant devices” are computing devices that are designed primarily or even exclusively to facilitate human-to-computer dialogs between users and automated assistants. One common example of an assistant device is a standalone interactive speaker which enables users to vocally engage with an automated assistant, e.g., by uttering a predetermined invocation phrase to activate the automated assistant so that the automated assistant can respond to the user's next utterance(s).
The focus of assistant devices on vocal interaction makes them especially suitable for use by children. However, many features built into or otherwise accessible using commercially-available automated assistants may not be suitable for children. For example, if a child were to ask if the Tooth Fairy were real, a conventional automated assistant may, based on documents located online, reply, “No, the Tooth Fairy is an imaginary character evoked by parents to incentivize children to pull loose teeth.” As another example, an automated assistant may be configured to engage with independent agents, such as third party applications, that enable users to order goods/services, such as pizza, movies, toys, etc.—this type of capability could be used by children who may not be able to judge all the consequences of their actions. Additionally, conventional automated assistants are designed to interact with people having fully-developed vocabularies. If a user's input is not sufficiently clear, the automated assistant may request clarification and/or disambiguation, rather than attempt to resolve the user's request based on a “best guess” as to the user's intent. Such a long back and forth may cause excess consumption of various computer and/or network resources (e.g., as a result of generating and rendering the requests for clarification and/or processing the resulting input) and/or may be frustrating for children with limited vocabularies.